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rsync command for mirroring drives (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 day ago by Harisfromcyber@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I wanted a sanity check on my current rsync flags. Posts on Reddit seem to highlight the use of rsync -avz for most use cases, for some instances even for when someone asks for mirroring a drive: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/rau071/rsync_command_to_mirror_drive/. This has not worked for me for the following case:

Drive #1:

file1.txt
file2.txt

Drive #2:

file1.txt
file2.txt
file3.txt

With -avz, file3 on the destination would not be deleted. With experimenting, I ended up now using rsync -havziP --delete-after --info=progress2 dir1/ dir2/, which actually ended up mirroring the drives for me. My question is: is this the best rsync approach for mirroring drives or was there a better option that works better?

Side note: it is interesting that rclone sync from rclone (https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_sync/) claims to delete by default, while with rsync it seems to be something you have to distinctly mention.

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[-] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 day ago

There's also --delete-before which might help if your destination is tight on available space. And, as usual with 'traditional' tools, man-page is pretty good, there's a ton of parameters which might be helpful. And, as @hades@feddit.uk already mentioned, compression (-z) may actually hurt performance if you have a lot of bandwidth or if you're copying over already compressed data like JPGs.

[-] Harisfromcyber@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

I wasn't aware of the full impact of -z. Thanks for clarifying that for me (thanks to @hades@feddit.uk as well!). I'll definitely keep an eye on the speed with -z vs without it when I do my next dry run.

[-] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 2 points 15 hours ago

If I'm not mistaken, dry-run (-n) doesn't give you the results as it doesn't actually transfer nor compress data. It's only useful to verify that the command you'll testing will actually do what you want. For performance measurement you can use --progress and --stats.

[-] Harisfromcyber@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 hours ago

Thanks! good to know. I'll keep that in mind.

this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
27 points (100.0% liked)

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